


rude awakening

by Soulykins



Series: Tumblr prompts [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Diego and Klaus are concerned, Five is pretty creeped out as well, Good Brother Diego Hargreeves, Good Brother Klaus Hargreeves, Protective Diego Hargreeves, Protective Klaus Hargreeves, She breaks into Five's room to watch him sleep levels of creepy, She likes to invade Five's personal bubble, The Handler is creepy, and the apocalypse didn't happen, au where the Handler lives, the Handler is very efficient
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-11-29 04:17:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18218108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soulykins/pseuds/Soulykins
Summary: When Five wakes up, he just knows someone is in the room with him. Of course, even he didn't except to come face to face with the Handler who he'd thought to be very very dead. And he especially didn't expect her to break into his room and watch him sleep while waiting for him to wake up.It's very fortunate that Diego and Klaus show up to wake him up and take offense to some random lady in the same room as their very uncomfortable, very thirteen-year-old brother.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was a response to a prompt on tumblr [here!](https://in-tua-deep.tumblr.com/post/183655260517/umbrella-academy-prompt-literally-any-of-the)
> 
> I wasn't sure if I should cross post in on ao4 but eh, what the heck might as well for the people who don't follow me on tumblr, y'all are missing out on my solid headcanon materials though!!

Five woke up to a presence in his room, one that pinged on his half awake sense as _dangerous_. After only a few seconds of vague awareness, he was already scrabbling up, cursing the fact that after a particularly harrowing morning a few days back, Diego had confiscated the knife he kept under his pillow. 

(The hole in the wall wasn't even _that_ noticeable.)

A shushing noise and a hand gripping his chin brought him abruptly over the last threshold of wakefulness as he stared into a face that he’d thought (he’d _hoped_ ) he would never see again. Blond bob, red lips, and teeth bared in a smile that felt more like a threat.

“Hello Number Five,” The Handler greeted him, saccharine sweetness dripping falsely from her lips as she caressed his face, “You certainly messed things up, this time.”

Her face has a scar now, curving across her jaw. The only sign that she’d almost been blown up by her own souvenir hand grenade in Five’s dramatic escape from the Commission base. He should have known better than to think it would kill her - the Handler (the Commission in general as a matter of fact) were like cockroaches. You thought you killed them right up until they showed up at the worst possible time.

Five felt trapped. He was in pajamas, without weapons, in his _bedroom_. And the Handler was sitting in a chair that had been pulled up by his bedside, clearly having watched him sleep for an indeterminate amount of time. She could have killed him at any moment in a place he was supposed to feel safe in, and that more than anything else about this situation burned.

“You look so sweet when you sleep,” The Handler crooned to him, uncaring of his discomfort or perhaps caring entirely too much in the wrong direction, “I could almost forget what an absolute pain you’ve been, Number Five.”

Five’s mouth was dry and he couldn’t bring himself to tear his eyes off of the Handler’s face - it was always unwise to take your eyes off of a predator, after all. Despite that, he managed to open his mouth and croak out a quiet but demanding, “Don’t _touch_ me.”

The Handler tutted at him like he was a disobedient child talking back, hand moving only to lightly pinch at his cheek instead of letting go like Five dearly wished she would. “You don’t get to make demands.” She informed him with another smile. Her fingers tightened on his cheek, making the pinch turn suddenly painful. “You could have been so great, Five. It’s such a pity.”

Before Five could open his mouth and respond to that, the door was opening (he’d been so focused on the Handler he hadn’t even noticed the approaching footsteps), and Diego was stepping into the room with Klaus at his heels. “Hey Five you up? Me and Klaus were gonna - ”

Before he could finish the thought he processed the contents of the room and froze, Klaus crashing into his back as in the same heartbeat Diego drew a knife out.

“Who the fuck are you?” Diego demanded, looking between the Handler and Five and clearly not liking what he was seeing. It didn’t help that Five was still only half propped up in bed looking more ruffled that he usually permitted to be seen by mortal eyes. 

If this had been a planned meeting, then Five wouldn’t still be in his pajamas and under the covers while his guest loomed above him, let alone the fact that she was pinching his cheek.

So in the next breath, Diego issued a second demand - “Get the fuck away from my brother, lady.”

The Handler stood up gracefully, finally pulling away from Five who took a shuddering breath of relief. “Now now, no need for all that.”

Klaus, who had been silent so far, gestured to Five. Five needed no more invitation than that and kicked the blankets up, in one movement and a flash of blue he’d jumped across the room to crouch by his brothers.

He wasn’t hiding behind them, he _wasn’t_. It just happened to be where he’d landed, was all. And if he leaned into the concerned hand that Klaus rested on his shoulder, then that was his own business thank you.

“What are you doing in my _thirteen-year-old_ brother’s room?” Diego snarled, stepping more firmly in front of Five even as Five automatically corrected his words with a quiet ‘fifty-eight’ on instinct.

“I seem to have overstayed my welcome,” The Handler stooped to pick up the briefcase that Five only just now noticed, making Diego stiffen and raise his hand to prepare to throw if necessary. But there was no need, the Handler didn’t make any move towards them. She only smiled and wiggled the fingers on one hand at Five in a wave, “Toodles, Five. I’ll see you again very soon.”

And with that, she was gone. 

Diego was instantly moving forward, sweeping the room to make absolutely sure she was gone, checking the window and the fire escape with a practiced ease that harkened back to his experience as a vigilante. Once done with his quick once-over, he turned to Five to demand answers, “Who the fuck was that?”

“Diego!” Klaus protested, drawing Five closer to his side. It was concerning to both physical adults in the room that Five didn’t protest the proximity, “You can’t say the fuck word around kids.”

“Not a kid.” Came the automatic correction. Five took a few deep breaths, in and out, in and out. This hadn’t exactly been the most ideal start to his day, and there was still a part of his hindbrain freaking out. It was taking a lot out of him just to attempt to appear as calm and collected as he desperately wished he was in reality.

“Five?” Diego prompted, a little more softly this time.

And really, if the Handler was going to pop up again his siblings probably deserved to know the danger. “She’s the Handler.” Five told them blankly, “I don’t know her actual name. If she has a name. She was my - my boss I guess. She’s part of the Commission who oversee time and she - she was the person who recruited me.”

She was the first person he’d interacted with outside of Dolores after forty years of isolation, coming to pluck him out the rubble and ruin like a demented fairy godmother. Even though she told him that he owed her, even back when he’d been a member of the Commission he’d never quite forgotten that they could have recruited him at any time. That they’d left him to rot for forty years alone before deciding he was just broken enough to mold into a decent enough weapon. Just desperate enough to sell his soul.

He hoped they regretted it now. He hated them, he hated them almost as much as he hated himself.

“She seemed pretty touchy feely there, bro.” There was something in Klaus’s voice that Five couldn’t quite identify, “What’s that about?”

Five wasn’t sure why that was important, but maybe there was something Five just wasn’t seeing? It was a new behavior, after all. That meant it might be significant. “She only started touching me after I came back. She knows I don’t like it.” 

She’d never touched him back when he’d been a recruit, a weapon. She’d respected his boundaries for the most part. But once he’d betrayed them it was fair game. Even taking him to become management she’d made silently clear that he’d lost the privilege of boundaries, putting her hands on his shoulders and touching his face and standing just that much too close. 

Of course, the bedroom thing was just taking it up to a whole new level of creepy.

Diego swore violently, “I’m going to kill her. You’re fucking thirteen - ” He ignored Five’s sightly more irritated correction, “She shouldn’t be even looking in your general direction. Did she climb in through the fire escape?”

“She was there when I woke up.” Five shrugged off Klaus’s hand to approach his bed again. He pulled the chair away from the bed and shoved it in the direction of his desk probably just a little bit more violently than was strictly necessary.

Klaus choked, “She _what?_ How long was she there? Was she just watching you sleep?”

“She did say I looked sweet in my sleep,” Five responded flippantly, moving to make the bed instead of addressing how his stomach twisted at the words. “She probably just showed up in here anyway. Suitcase thing. No break in necessary.”

Diego swore again, looking like he was about to commit violence at any second. It almost took Five aback how angry his brothers both looked. They didn’t even know the Handler, why did they care so much?

Then again, they were living in this house too sort of. The idea that someone could just break in so easily was unsettling to any of them. Maybe they were angry that Five's general existence seemed to invite dangerous people to break in?

He felt compelled to try and comfort them. “Don’t worry,” He assured them both, “She’s only interested in me. She wanted the apocalypse to happen, and I sort of blew her up with her own grenade the last time I saw her. I don’t think she’d go after you guys if you keep out of her way.”

Klaus bit his knuckles, looking off to the side at something the others couldn’t see. Diego’s face just darkened further, “That’s not the point, Five.”

“It’s fine,” Five brushed them off, finishing making the bed with a flourish. “Though Diego, I will require the return of my knife. I have no desire to be caught weaponless again, I hope you understand.”

Klaus shook his head, striding forward and slinging an arm across his smallest brother’s shoulder, “Actually! I’m thinking sleepovers. For a while. Until uh, you know, we can commit some fun family murder together. Bonding time.”

“We’re family, Five.” Diego pointed out, “Family looks out for each other. And don’t let predators anywhere near their siblings. She said she’d come back, so you’re going to just have to deal with one of us with you at all times. And then, when she does show up, we kill her. With extreme prejudice.”

Why did Five have a feeling that something was being communicated that was going over his head? He didn’t like it. Though he had compared the Handler to a predator in his head earlier, with fangs hiding behind that lipsticked smile, Diego spat it out like an insult of the highest order.

“I can take care of myself, Diego.” Five pointed out, allowing some measure on confusion to bleed onto his face. And he could, given the fact that his weapons were returned to him. As well as figuring out why he’d frozen like he had this morning, that couldn’t happen again. 

The Handler didn’t have to pretend to respect his boundaries anymore, but Five didn’t have to pretend to be making an effort, either. The next time the Handler reached for him he could just jump out of the way, easy as that.

“But you don’t have to.” Diego’s voice was firm.

“Sleepovers!” Klaus exclaimed again, clapping his hands together, “We can braid each others hair and paint our nails!”

Five wouldn’t admit under pain of death that sleepovers actually sounded - nice. That he doubted he’d be able to sleep on his own anyway after this for a while, not with the threat of the Handler showing up in his room looming over him. So he gave a noncommittal shrug, which was just about as good as permission anyway.

Klaus cheered and Diego cracked a small smile, breaking the tension in the room. “All right, all right. C’mon. Put some clothes on, we only came in here to invite you out to come with us for breakfast and we’re definitely not leaving you alone now.”

Five rolled his eyes, but obediently trotted over to the wardrobe anyway.

It was nice to have his brothers there. He didn’t _need_ them, he could take care of himself - but it was still nice.

It was nice to have a family again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time for breakfast. And interrogation, can't forget a good old interrogation.
> 
> Five doesn't understand why Klaus and Diego are focusing on the things they are, but he at least makes an attempt to catch his idiot brothers up to speed on the situation. Honestly, it's like talking to a pair of brick walls.

Breakfast wasn’t bad. Just a little hole-in-the-wall diner that Diego swore by, where no one questioned Five when he ordered his black coffee. The waitress had greeted Diego warmly, clearly familiar with him.

It made Five feel like he didn’t know his siblings, anymore. Didn’t know their habits, didn’t know the places they frequented. There had been a time where Five had known the others like the back of his hand, and it hurt at the oddest times that they were practically strangers again.

Klaus was chowing down with gusto, eagerly shoveling his own food into his mouth and when that ran out thieving food off of Diego’s plate. Wisely he didn’t touch Five’s, perhaps some part of him with a sense of self-preservation warned him that he’d lose a hand if he tried. Food was still - well. It was a touchy subject for Five in general, and he mechanically brought his fork up to his mouth almost without tasting the pancakes at all.

Finally, Diego cleared his throat and with very little ceremony addressed Five, “So, you want to tell us more about what all that was about?”

He didn’t have to specify. Five picked at his food, what little appetite he’d had was rapidly diminishing. He didn’t really want to talk about the Handler at all but - didn’t his siblings deserve to be forewarned? And he wouldn’t exactly put it past the Handler to mess with them. Not when she already knew how much they meant to him.

(Maybe it had been foolish, making their safety a condition of his employment. Telling her in no uncertain terms that he wanted _all_ of them safe, from Luther all the way down to Vanya. It revealed too much of his hand, but then again that’s what he’d wanted her to think. Wanted her to think she had something to dangle over his head, had something to _control_ him with when he was an independent variable. People making assumptions missed things, that was a lesson hammered into his head a long time ago.)

“I don’t know. I don’t know what she wanted. We prevented the apocalypse.” Five admitted reluctantly. He so _hated_ when he had to play guessing games with motivations. In many ways it had been so much easier when he was the only person in the world.

“Why would anyone want the end of the world to happen?” Klaus asked, stabbing his fork into another piece of Diego’s abandoned pancakes.

Five just shrugged again. “She always said about the apocalypse being the end of something, but not everything or something like that I don’t know. After she recruited me it’s not like we sat down and chatted every so often or anything. I was a temporal assassin and she’s - something. Something management-y.”

“Was she the one that shot you?” Diego asked, looking confused.

“No,” Five shook his head, “I got hurt blowing the suitcases up. Shrapnel, not a bullet. I blew her up in the message room before that.”

“About that,” Klaus cut in, chewing with his mouth open. Five aimed a kick at his shins under the table but Klaus didn’t even flinch, “What kind of weird time organization just leaves explosives out and about for little kids to get their hands on?”

Five bristled. He wasn’t a _little kid_. Actually, he was pretty sure that regular thirteen-year-olds would be deeply offended by that as well, so he aimed another sharper kick at Klaus’s knees with a scowl.

Klaus yelped satisfyingly, but Diego was looking expectant as well in a way that signaled to Five that he actually did want an answer to the question.

“They weren’t _out in the open_. She showed them to me on lunch break in her office, souvenirs or whatever she’d collected. She had the gun that killed Hitler and stuff. It was weird.” Five shrugged. At the time it had been a rather stressful situation, what with the red folder still shoved up his sweater and all of her ominous words about the Commission taking out people who went against the swiftly and without mercy.

“You were in her office?” Diego’s voice had that odd tone again. “Alone?”

“No, the whole office packed in there for show-and-tell.” Five rolled his eyes, “Yeah alone. She wanted to watch me eat or something because she was on a liquid diet. It all worked out in the end, I guess.”

“She wanted to watch you _eat?_ ” Diego’s voice rose an entire octave during the course of the sentence. Five didn’t see what his issue was. “Why didn’t you say no?”

Five isn’t quite sure what they’re not getting about the whole him going there to sabotage them and steal information and having to act the part for at least a small portion of the time until he ditched. “It’s not like I could say no, Diego.” Five said witheringly, “She was looking over the top of the bathroom stall while I was literally hiding a stolen file under my shirt. It wasn’t exactly something I could just casually turn down”

Klaus started choking on his pancake around the time Five said the word ‘bathroom’ and Diego slapped at his brother’s back with a firm hand. Klaus was wheezing, tears in his eyes from the sudden wrong pipe situation.

“She went into the _bathroom_ with you?” Diego was incredulous.

“The Commission bathrooms are gender neutral.” Five didn’t see why that was important at all. “It’s just a bathroom, Diego.”

“He means,” Klaus interjected, having recovered from his brief brush with death a la pancake, “That she looked over the stall? What if you were actually going to the bathroom and not doing super spy things? Or - or were you?”

“No, I wasn’t shitting while trying to find apocalypse clues, Klaus.” Five’s voice was as dry as the desert. “I had some things a little more important than bodily functions on my mind, as difficult as it might be for you to picture.”

There was silence at the table. Klaus was looking off into space, indicating he was probably listening to something only he could hear, while Diego looked coldly furious. It made Five shift in his seat, unsure. 

It had been the only option available at the time, surely Diego understood that? It’s not like he’d wanted to spend his lunch break chatting with the Handler. It had seemed like every time they were in the same proximity there was a hand on his shoulder or caressing his face or _worst of all_ booping him on the nose. He did not have a nose that liked to be booped. 

“I would’ve spent the time looking for clues,” Five crossed his arms defensively, “But it’s not like it was a total loss. It’s how I got my hands on the grenades after all.”

Diego sighed deeply, scrubbing a hand across his face as he the anger fell away. He looked tired. “That’s not it, Five. Just - after she took you to the headquarters or whatever, she tried to get you alone. I don’t like it.”

“Only really in the bathroom and her office.” Five offered. And during the final confrontation, but that didn’t really count, right? Gloria had been there. Unconscious behind her desk after Five knocked her out, but it definitely didn’t count as alone if someone alive was still in the room so. 

He’d been so _sure_ she’d died. How could the Handler have survived that explosion? He hated her. He hated the fact that she told him that she’d _saved_ him, that he somehow _owed_ her. He’d saved himself.

What the Commission did - it had been killing him. Slowly but surely. Every remaining soft and gentle part of himself had been burned away, festering and rotting inside him. The only thing that kept him clinging to the ledge of sanity had been Vanya’s book, the reminder that he still had a family to get back to, to _protect_.

The Handler had called him a pragmatist, and maybe be was. But not when it came to family. There was nothing practical about the Hargreeves, nothing quantifiable or so _ordinary._

“Did anything else happen? In the bathroom or the office?” Diego pressed, and Five genuinely couldn’t figure out why he needed to know. What did Diego think he’d gain from it? A better understanding of the Handler, maybe? Diego _had_ gone to the police academy for however long it took him to be kicked out again. Profilers were a thing, right? Luther’s guilty pleasure was shitty crime shows, and Five was pretty sure most of them had a line about nothing being insignificant.

“She gave me candy? They distilled decades down into candy or whatever, I had one that tasted like the 1950s. Oh! That’s how those guys at the bowling alley found us.” That was a relevant detail, right? Showed how far ahead the Handler was capable of planning or just how crafty she was. There certainly wasn’t any indication that he would have grabbed some candy to go, especially after telling her he didn’t like desserts. Was that planned just for him, or did she usually keep trackers hidden in sweet wrappers on her desk? 

“They found us through candy?” Klaus sounded confused, at the same time Diego said, “I’m pretty sure there’s a saying about taking candy from a stranger.”

Five sighed. He hated having to actually talk to people who couldn’t follow his leaps in logic. It was at times like this he missed Dolores dearly. “No, idiots. She hid a tracker in the candy I took - and the Handler isn’t a _stranger_ , Diego. Every agent has one though.”

“Has candy?”

God why were they still talking about this. “No a _tracker_. Of course, I didn’t expect it since it’s usually implanted somewhere. What can I say, she’s good.” He held up a hand to forestall the next question, “And no, I don’t have a tracker implanted in my body.”

Diego and Klaus sighed in relief.

“I cut that one out the first night I was back.”

Annddd they were back in an uproar again. 

“I’m _fine_. Vanya took care of it for me.” Even though he could have absolutely dealt with it on his own. But it was Vanya, so he was willing to make some concessions for her peace of mind. It wasn’t even like it was a big deal, just a small cut in the grand scheme of things.

(The mark on his arm lingered though, still red and angry. But he hardly noticed it anymore.)

“I feel like we should have been more on top of what you were doing.” Klaus pondered out loud, earning himself another venomous glare from Five. If only his family hadn’t built up an immunity to his glares already. The little Commission employees would have been quaking in their boots.

Diego sighed even more deeply, as if talking to the both of them was an absolute chore. Well, Diego should be on this side of the equation. It was infinitely more frustrating from Five’s seat, that could be assured.

“Okay, so how dangerous is this Handler lady, anyway?” Finally. Moving onto the sensible questions.

“Very.” Five confirmed instantly, then hesitated, “Well, her aim is pretty shit but I don’t think she was actually trying to kill me?”

“This just keeps getting better.” Diego mourned into his disappearing pancakes.

“She’s smart though.” Five warned his brothers seriously, “There’s a reason why she was so high up on the food chain. Manipulative, cunning, resourceful. She has a knack for reading people, s’why she’s a recruiter.”

Of course, even she was capable of mistakes. Five had learned how to work around manipulative insightful assholes alongside learning to _walk_. The trick was always to give them what they expected to hear. People like Dad and the Handler didn’t _want_ to hear a no, they wanted to be successful in their manipulations, and sometimes if you gave them exactly what they wanted - they didn’t look closer. 

He was terribly out of practice after his years in the apocalypse, but this sort of misdirection was pressed into his bones. Like riding a bicycle, really.

The waitress came around and their conversation died with her arrival. Five might have proposed on the spot if he wasn’t still getting over Dolores. 

“We’ll just get the check, please.” Diego told her, summoning a smile.

“And a to-go box.” Five interjected as well, not bothering to smile. He’d been reliably told that his smile was ‘creepy’ and ‘unnatural’ and something he ‘shouldn’t be inflicting on good upstanding citizens.’ Regardless, he didn’t want to waste the food he’d left after so promptly losing his appetite with the conversation.

Again, food. Still a touchy subject. He glared at Diego and Klaus to say anything about it, but they both remained mercifully silent.

“Okay we’re going to go home and _you_ \- ” Diego pointed a finger at Five, “ - are going to tell us all exactly what happened when you vanished on us and almost died.”

Five supposed that was fair. After all, it had been Diego and Allison who presumably carried his unconscious body out of that attic somehow and back to Mom to fix up. He likely _would_ have died that day if they hadn’t been there for him. It just - hadn’t seemed very important at the time. Stopping the apocalypse (saving his siblings) had seemed of much higher priority. 

“Wasn’t I just doing that though?” Five muttered getting up from the table with a scowl. He wasn’t looking forward to repeating himself, and his siblings always tended to be dreadfully dull when he was giving explanations. Always with the questions and clarifications and random topic changes. Frankly, it was a chore.

Klaus gave him a sympathetic face as they all made their way to the door.

God, it was way too early still to be dealing with this bullshit. Trust the Handler to ruin a perfectly good day.

Well, better to get it over with sooner rather than later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise! turns out i am writing more for this 'verse
> 
> a fun conversation, no Handler to be found, and more misunderstanding  
> except for the fact that like,, the Handler really is creepy?? Seriously when she looked over the bathroom stall I was like ??????? what????? what if he'd been going to the bathroom!! you don't look over the stall door!! that's like bathroom etiquette 101! he's thirteen!! don't be looking over the bathroom stall at a minor! 
> 
> diego and klaus share my point of view, frankly
> 
>  
> 
> as usual if you catch a spelling or grammar error feel free to point them out to me and I'll get right on fixing that!! if you want more rambles in general feel free to yell at me over on my tumblr in-tua-deep ;3c


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five sits down with the family to discuss his history with the Handler.
> 
> People are worried, Five is irritated, Diego is frustrated, and everyone would very much like to know what the fuck is up with the whole Handler situation please and thank you.

Five crosses his arms across his chest where he’s sitting down on the sofa. The family slowly wanders in, Klaus crawling around and gathering them up for a family meeting while Diego sits with him like he needs a babysitter in his own house.

(The Handler showed up inside the house, in his bedroom. It’s not an unfound fear, it’s _logical_ even, but it still rankles. Still has Five bristling and snappish.)

Once they’d all finally wandered in and taken a seat, Diego started off the wonderful little meeting with a bang, announcing, “One of Five’s fucked up time coworkers or whatever broke in this morning.”

“What?” Luther asked loudly, while Vanya immediately started asking Five if he was alright (this is why Vanya was Five’s favorite), and Allison started immediately trying to get more information.

“You can’t just say it like that!” Klaus spoke over everyone, putting his hands on his hips and striking a dramatic pose, “What he means to say is, one of the creepy time assassins is targeting Five so we can’t let our babiest brother out of our sight until she’s dead.”

Yeah, that wasn’t any better really and that just made everyone start speaking over each other trying to get answers. It was giving Five an actual headache.

“She’s not an assassin.” Five corrected loudly, drawing every eye to him, “She’s - I don’t know what she is, a recruiter? She’s important, I know that. But if she wanted to kill me, she could have done that before I woke up.”

He didn’t feel like it would be a wise idea to bring up the fact that he was pretty sure the Handler wanted him to _suffer_ before she would even think about killing him. In some strange and terrible way, the Handler _liked_ him. In the same way that children like a particularly favored toy, or a pet. She told him he belonged at the Commission, but it was probably more accurate to say that she thought he belonged _to_ the Commission.

Weapons weren’t supposed to think for themselves, after all.

“Okay what exactly happened?” Allison asked patiently, expectant eyes on Five.

Everyone turned their attention to Five, and he shuffled uneasily under the weight of their gazes. “Well. When I was - ” Alone, desperate, haunted, vulnerable, “ - in the apocalypse, I was recruited by the Commission. You guys already know that, and they trained me as an assassin and I was the best of the best.”

He got a few nods and a few puzzled looks. God, the information sharing in this family was shit. This is why the apocalypse nearly happened, for fucks sake.

“So, the person who recruited me was the Handler. She was sort of the boss? But not entirely. She was high up though, in the organization.” He never had quite figured out what she did outside of recruiting. She spoke of higher ups but there wasn’t a single person Five had met that had been higher up on the food chain than her.

She had her own office. None of the case managers had that, packed into one room like sardines in a can. Even the Gloria, the so-called most important cog in the machine, didn’t have as big and luxurious an office as the Handler.

“Anyway, this morning she showed up in my room.”

And suddenly everyone was up in arms, yelling again. Five sank back against the sofa as the sibling not-in-the-know decided, with no further information, that clearly Diego and Klaus were more qualified than he was to yell about the whole situation.

No information got given, because everyone was talking over one another and not listening. Except Vanya, who just looked at Five with sad eyes that, to Five, screamed _you see what you left me to deal with alone?_

“Ugh, why can no one in this family shut up!” Five hollered over the voices, making everyone quiet down for a solid second of blissful silence before Five continued, “What I was going to say is that all she did was call me a pain before the two musketeers over here barged in, and then she left. She didn’t even break anything.”

“She also watched you sleep, called you sweet, and was being all touchy-touchy with your face.” Klaus cut in pointedly, even though Five honestly wasn’t sure what point he was trying to make. Clearly the others got it though if Allison’s gasp was anything to go by.

“That’s not important.” Five told them, exasperated. 

“No,” Diego disagreed, crossing his arms across his chest like that made him intimidating or something, “I think that part is very important. Now, Five was going to tell us exactly what happened the last time he met the Handler, when he vanished after the ice cream truck incident.”

All eyes turned to him. Honestly it kind of made his skin crawl, being the center of attention, but he could pull through. 

“I needed more information about why the apocalypse happened,” Five said carefully, not looking at Vanya, “And Luther already shot down my probability map idea. So really this is his fault, since given the choice I would have preferred not to have to deal with the Handler.”

He’d known even then it was an impossible situation, known that he could very well be walking into his death. He hadn’t told Luther _exactly_ how dangerous it was (like walking into a nest full of vipers) but he felt like the inherent danger had been implied. After all, he’d gone to speak with his ‘boss’ and goodness knows his siblings should know just how deadly _he_ was.

“She offered me a job, in management.” She’d offered him exactly what he wanted - his siblings’ safety. All it would cost was the rest of the world. “And since I needed an in, I accepted. Simple as that. I managed to get a file from the desk of the case manager in charge of the apocalypse, but it was a red herring. Then the Handler invited me to lunch and showed me some of the souvenirs in her office - ”

“You are skipping over way too much,” Diego said firmly. “You didn’t say anything about the bathroom.”

“Because the bathroom isn’t _important_ , Diego.” Five shot back, scowling.

Allison raised a hand, “I for one would like to know about the bathroom.”

Five hated it when they ganged up on him. Hated thinking back to that bathroom. It was an _uncomfortable_ experience to say the least, and he didn’t exactly wish to share it with the room. Blood rushed to his cheeks alongside the embarrassment, making him feel self conscious.

“Nothing happened,” He asserted another time, but Diego’s withering glare had him giving some ground. “I went to the bathroom to look at the file, it’s not like I could casually peruse my stolen information out in the open. There wasn’t any information either, just a printed out smiley face. And then the Handler came in to go to the bathroom, and she started talking about - about cogs in the machine and things not working and stuff.”

“And then?” Diego prompted him.

Five shot his brother a scowl, he was _getting there_. “And then she asked if I wanted lunch in her office so she could, I don’t know, eat vicariously through me or something. She was on a liquid diet. And I said yes, because saying no would look suspicious.”

“You’re leaving out the part where she was literally peeping over the bathroom stall, bro.” Klaus pointed out, making Five have a very intense daydream of throwing his brother out of the window as the others started muttering and looking furious all over again.

“She _what?_ Allison demanded, sounding very much like Diego. 

Why did his siblings keep focusing on insignificant details? “Yes yes,” Five waved his hand, “She has a serious lack of boundaries. Thank you. I’m well aware of it, seeing as it’s literally directed at me.”

“And you went and had lunch with this woman alone?” Honestly Allison and Diego should just share a brain at this point, Diego was making triumphant noises and pointing at Allison in solidarity of sharing a single brain cell. 

“Because I had so many other options.” Five’s voice was as dry as the desert, and Allison had the decency to look at least a tiny bit abashed. “Moving on, she showed me the weaponry in her office which would later be used for my escape, so having lunch with her ended up as a sound tactical decision.”

He paused briefly, almost expecting one of his siblings to interrupt him _again_ and was pleasantly surprised when they didn’t. “Well, after that I intercepted a message to Hazel and Cha-Cha. The one I told you all about… the man who caused the apocalypse.”

Bringing up Harold Jenkins’ name in front of Vanya didn’t seem like a wise thing to do at the best of times, and by the way she stiffened in her seat he could tell she didn’t want to hear it. 

“Hold up hold up.” Klaus held his hands up to form a ‘t’ in the classic time out symbol, “Backtrack a little bit here shortstack. You’re forgetting about the candy.”

“The candy?” Allison raised her eyebrows.

“I didn’t _forget_ about the candy,” Five spat at his lankiest sibling, glaring on principle for the shortstack comment alone. “The Handler hid a tracker in the candy on her desk, so when I took one and pocketed it that’s how they found us at the bowling alley. That’s all.”

“And your arm from the first night!” Klaus pointed at Five like he was accusing him of something.

Vanya looked interested now, staring at Five, “Your arm? The one you hurt?”

Five gritted his teeth. Honestly, he couldn’t understand his family’s obsession with all the minor details, he’d already gotten rid of the trackers so it was a moot point. But Vanya was looking at him and so he nodded shortly. “I had to get the first tracker out of my arm. I ditched it though, and then I went to Vanya’s place. She took care of it, it was fine.”

“I hate a whole lot of things about that sentence.” Allison said simply, “Including the implication that you literally stabbed yourself instead of asking for help. But continue. You got the message, then what?”

Five rubbed a little at his upper arm where he’d dug the tracker out, shifting on the sofa. “Well. The Handler found me. And I’d sort of knocked out Gloria so she knew for sure that I wasn’t, you know, doing good Commission sanctioned things? So she tried to shoot me.”

His siblings made outraged noises and Five rolled his eyes, “Oh, grow up. Way more people shot at me that week than the Handler, don’t be a bunch of babies.” Honestly, Vanya had come far closer to killing him than anyone at the Commission, but he wasn’t insensitive enough to use that as a talking point. “Besides, it’s not like I didn’t give as good as I got. I grabbed the grenades from her office and blew her up after she ran out of bullets.”

No need to mention her little speech, after all it didn’t mean anything. He _didn’t_ owe her. No need to even give that thought more attention than it had already received.

“Then I went to the room with all the suitcases and grabbed one, then I blew that room up as well to stop anyone from following me.” Five continued, relieved to finally come to an end of the tale, “And then I didn’t jump in time and that’s when I got hurt, but I got back to you guys and it was fine.”

Diego and Allison’s unimpressed faces said a lot about how ‘fine’ they thought he’d been, after they’d carried his unconscious bleeding out ass all the way home for Mom to fix.

His side still twinged in pain, which was very unappreciated. At least the interrogation seemed to be over, for now. They were leaning back, looking at one another and frowning at the news.

“I thought she was dead until she contacted me at the bowling alley.” Five admitted.

Diego’s head snapped towards Five. “Hold up, I thought the last time you saw her was at the Commission?”

Had Five said that? He didn’t think so. It wasn’t true, after all. 

“No, she contacted me at the bowling alley and invited me to a hotel. It was a trap of a kind, of course, designed to separate me from you guys long enough to trigger the apocalypse.” Five admitted grudgingly. He was never proud of being outplayed or outmaneuvered.

Diego took a deep steadying breath, clasping his hands in front of him as if he was praying to some forgotten gods to explain why his siblings were idiots. Five could have told him already that it wouldn’t work, the universe kept its secrets.

“You’re telling me that, after this woman went out of her way to make you uncomfortable, tried frequently to get you alone, and at one point did her level best to kill you, you then decided to go, _alone_ , to a hotel room without any backup at all.”

Well, when Diego put it like that he made it sound so much worse of a decision than it was.

“You guys were busy.” Five defended, “I wasn’t going to be gone long, and the apocalypse was more important than getting me backup.”

“No it _wasn’t._ ” Diego yelled, getting to his feet and actually startling Five badly. “You can’t just do that, Five! Like it or not, you’re back now and you’re family. That means you actually have to start caring about your own well-being for fucks sake. Do you know what it would do to us, to any of us, if you went and died again? You didn’t tell any of us where you were going. You would have just _vanished. Again._ ”

Five could feel the blood rushing from his face at the thought. 

He hadn’t meant to leave the first time, they _knew_ that, right? But - to be fair he’d spent most of the very stressful week before the apocalypse ditching them and vanishing and going off on his own mission. But they were always supposed to know he’d come _back_. Stopping the apocalypse - it was all for them. Of course it was. Five could have spent his years with the Commission if it was just about himself, but of course he wanted to save his family more than anything else.

He looked down at his shoes, unwilling to look any of his siblings in the eyes. Not when there was that stinging feeling between his own that he was mentally beating back with a broom. “‘M sorry.”

He wasn’t sorry for going alone, not really. If he’d spent so long trying to get back and save his siblings then he wasn’t exactly going to jump at opportunities to put them in danger - and the Handler _was_ dangerous there was no doubt about that.

It was easier to fight back the sudden sadness with irritation, so Five grasped at that with both hands. He looked up, summoning up a scowl on his face, “I wasn’t even there for more than like, five minutes though. As soon as I figured out it was a stalling tactic, I left.”

Anger came easily. He hated the Handler. He _hated_ her. Her comments about his shorts, the flippant way she laid out his options regarding the apocalypse, even the way she’d assumed if he jumped to the apocalypse instead of dying that he would _hope_ she came back for him. He had more information now, more knowledge for his equations. He could figure out a new one, could go back again without the interference with the Commission. The only way he would ever stop fighting for his family is if they killed him, and they knew that.

“And she’s back.” Vanya said softly, “Do you think she wants to kill you?”

Five thought she wanted to keep him as a pet, really. A caged animal, like the people who owned tigers and bears and other things that could kill them. A show of power. She wanted to torment him, to cause the apocalypse and rub his failures in his face. If she did want him dead, she wanted him humiliated first. 

She could have killed him easily this morning, a simple in and out job. But she’d waited for him to wake up, she’d wanted to look him in the eyes and make him acknowledge that she had the power in the situation. She’d wanted to gloat and make him feel small and insignificant.

He hated the fact that she’d mostly succeeded.

“Maybe,” Was what he offered to Vanya, not quite willing to share his thoughts with the group. “But not quickly, I’d be dead already if it were that simple.”

“So to summarize,” Diego spoke up, looking deadly serious, “Next time she shows up, we kill her dead. We can show everyone what she looks like from the security footage - ” Five cringed. He’d forgotten about the cameras set up throughout the house. The very idea that everyone would see him so helpless crawled under his skin like the cockroaches he’d eaten during the apocalypse. They’d see him freeze up, see her touching his face and him doing nothing.

A fleeting thought of destroying the footage before anyone could see his weakness crossed his mind, but he ruthlessly squashed it. Being able to ID the Handler was more important than his own _delicate sensibilities._ He needed to make sure she couldn’t use his siblings against him, at the very least.

“ - and we set up a rotating schedule in the meantime.” Diego was continuing. “Someone needs to be with Five at all times until we can kill this bitch.”

It felt like a babysitting chart. It felt like they were dismissing his ability to take care of himself. It felt like they were treating him like a _child_ and he bit the inside of his cheek to prevent himself from saying something nasty. Children weren’t usually the targets of assassination, after all, so it’s not like it was a childish problem. If he thought about it in that frame of mind he hated it a little less.

Still hated it, though.

Five levered himself up off the sofa, watching all eyes snap to him from where they’d been discussing shifts or whatever. “I’m just going to the kitchen,” Five grumbled defensively, “Coffee.”

“I could grab some snacks.” Klaus said cheerfully, because apparently Five wasn’t even allowed to go to another room without accompaniment now.

(He ignored the little voice pointing out that the Handler had literally shown up in his room while the others where in the building, so it wasn’t that farfetched of a notion. Logic could deal with his siblibs company for more than an hour at a time and _then_ come talk to him.)

But for now, Five just sighed and allowed the fucking escort as Klaus babbled on about… something. Five wasn’t paying attention.

He just hoped that the Handler would show up soon so they could just get this showdown over with. If he was exposed to his siblings for much longer, he might just have to take the Handler’s mission into his own hands.

It was going to be a long, _long_ day, Five could tell already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> five was supposed to be told exactly why they're worried in this chapter (they point out the gross vibes to him) but that didn't end up happening whoops so just take this chapter as it is
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> if you spot any spelling or grammar errors yet them my way to correct!! love u guys <3

**Author's Note:**

> I kind of left this open bc I wasn't sure if I would want to add to it in the future??
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> For NOW it's done but I might revisit who knows, I could go for writing more creepy Handler who is probably slightly unhinged since Five betrayed her, tried to murder her, blew up her place of work, and stopped the apocalypse which she seemed very keen on happening
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> to clarify though i don't think the Handler is actually predatory i think Diego and Klaus are making assumptions based on the information Five is giving them that is, admittedly, limited. Five very much doesn't think of himself as a child in any capacity so the thought literally would not even cross his mind let alone his cottoning on enough to correct them tbh


End file.
